Welcome to Vietnam...

As we were leaving Cambodia I seem to recall Leslie saying something along the lines of "I hope something interesting happens to us soon"...be careful what you wish for!!!
We took a short flight from Siem Reap to Saigon and when we arrived Leslie encountered a few problems with immigration. Her visa was valid for June 16th, not July 16th and therefore she was not allowed to enter the country (although we'd all looked at our visas we hadn't noticed). Of course Chantale and I didn't know this at first and were wondering why she was sitting over by the police for so long. Luckily we are in a communist country where corruption runs wild and a bribe can buy your way out of anything. Thank goodness also for a random, nice man from Saskatchewan who took Leslie through all the steps and told her what to expect. Poor Leslie spent 2 nights under "house arrest" in a 4 star hotel close to the airport and spent a lot more money than she had expected to enter Vietnam (she's a free woman today though). Chantale and I weren't really able to stay there so we ventured into the center of the city and stayed in the backpackers' area. First impression of Saigon - crazy traffic and motorbikes everywhere! We were actually given a quote today of 2 500 000 motorbikes in this city (pop 8 000 000) and 1000 new motorbikes on the road a day. My first ride on the back of a moto was adrenaline rushing - I don't think I've ever experienced so many close-call accidents in a 20 minute period in all my life. There also doesn't seem to be much of a system of crossing lights, you basically just have to step off the curb into a mob of 50+ bikes flying at you and keep walking a steady speed and they veer around you. It's a weird feeling but kinda fun at the same time. Stop lights and signs seem to be just suggestive. I don't even want to imagine how many accidents there are in this city a day! Yesterday we took a little tour on a cyclo with 2 pretty funny guys but they ended up ripping us off (sometimes I feel we must have a "scam me" sign on our foreheads or something). We did end up seeing some pretty cool stuff including a pagoda, a market and the War remnants museum. The museum was good. I don't think I would have been very proud to say I was American in there though. They had disturbing pictures of the effects of the agent orange the US had used, some of the torturing the US soldiers had done, and even fetuses in jars (siamese twins and one with a huge head and hare lip). The number of Vietnamese people that died during the war is unreal. Again I'm feeling a bit ignorant at my lack of knowledge of history.
Today we took a half day tour to the Cu Chi tunnels that were used by guerillas during the war. It was really interesting to see. Going only 30m inside the tunnel was so tough. They were super small, dark and so hot. We've just been wandering around a bit, shopping (but I keep making my bag more and more heavy) killing some time before our 9 hour overnight bus trip to Na Trang. We are all excited to get out of the city and closer to a beach. It's been really hot and humid and it'll be nice to use the ocean as an escape from the heat. We've been eating some Vietnamese food but are getting annoyed with the leaves in all the food that taste like black licorice (is that fenyl?) and I started my day with a good strong Vietnamese coffee. We are finding it really hard to understand their English. I guess we were spoiled by how well the Cambodians could communicate with us. We're also struggling a bit with the money conversion - it's funny to go into a bank and walk out with over 3 million dong!
I'll update again soon when I'm not working on my suntan - haha!